Inspiring a new generation

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British flowers, Growing Cut Flowers, National Trust, Our Flower Patch, school gardening

You might have gathered by now I’m passionate about flowers and particularly British grown cut flowers. The overwhelming majority of cut flowers available in the UK are imported. It’s a little odd then to think that we used to supply all of our cut flower needs up until the mid-twentieth century. The advent of motorways and air travel brought the flower industry in Britain almost to its knees. But, over the last few years, I have discovered that there is an inspiring group of small scale flower farmers out there who are trying and succeeding in turning the tide away from imported blooms. They are embracing social media to get the message across that British flowers are the best, whether it’s via forums, Facebook, Instagram or the hugely popular hour-long Twitter chat on Monday evenings from 8-9pm with the #Britishflowers. They are a delightful group eager to share and help and it’s how I came to meet Sara. She came to my rescue last spring when I put out a request on Twitter for some seedlings. We ended up meeting in the car park of a hotel and swapping plants from the boots of our cars and a friendship was forged.

Sara is addicted to flowers and her enthusiasm is contagious. So it was no surprise when I heard that she wanted to use her love of all things flowery to inspire a new generation of gardeners. With her friend, Cally (you might know Cally from her blog Countrygate) they have devised Our Flower Patch. Both Cally and Sara were teachers before life took them in different directions. Cally now designs and delivers outdoor education projects for bodies such as the National Trust and Sara grows and sells cut flowers from her field on the edge of Salisbury Plain. The idea behind Our Flower Patch is to combine their knowledge of education and their passion for flowers.

Our Flower Patch

When you think about it, growing plants is a perfect way to teach children so many different skills, whether it’s using maths to measure out flower beds, using science to understand what a plant needs to grow, improving communication and team working skills as they garden together or learning about geography by finding out where plants originated. So Sara and Cally have put together an online resource for schools, community gardens or youth groups such as the Scouts. The hope is that they will develop their own cut flower patches using this as an opportunity to teach aspects of the National Curriculum and, at the same time, it will offer those who take part the chance to make some money by selling the cut flowers they produce.

Both Sara and Cally understand the importance of being introduced to growing at an early age. ‘Growing a few flowers is an easy introduction into gardening for children of all ages. It’s very visual which is important to children. Even the most random patch can look beautiful. You don’t need lots of space. Flowers can be grown in old buckets and I haven’t yet met a child who wasn’t overjoyed to pick a bunch of flowers they’d grown and take them home whereas they can be less than enthusiastic about salad or carrots, perhaps fearing that they might actually have to eat their handiwork’, says Cally. Sara’s young son has already been bitten by the bug. ‘He likes sniffing the flowers, and watching the many butterflies and bees that come and join us there. There are usually a few friendly birds that come and join us too. At his age it is enough to pick a single flower and present it to someone, you can see the joy it gives both him and the recipient.’

Our Flower Patch

Cally has fond memories of the childhood garden she grew up in. ‘My mother never grew flowers in borders. They were a crop for the house and church. Dahlias, sweet peas and sweet Williams were favourites along with lots of bulbs in spring. My granny grew herbs in old Belfast sinks near the back door and had a large lavender hedge. She used to spread her linen on top to dry it.’

One of Sara’s earliest garden memories involves flowers too. ‘I used to pick lots of different flower petals and mash them all up to make “perfume” in its loosest sense of the word!! I’m sure it would have smelt absolutely disgusting and would probably have been more use as a plant food than a perfume. I used to have more success with drying petals to make potpourri, not the terrible artificially scented dyed stuff that is sold in some shops, but the lovely really delicate beautiful smell of garden rose petals, other petals and herb leaves dried & mixed together. I guess I started rather early with drying flowers & (many) years later even dried all my own flower petal confetti for my wedding day.’

Our Flower Patch – seed sowing

For Our Flower Patch, Sara and Cally have joined forces with Higgledy Garden and specially selected a collection of flowers which will appeal to children and suit the needs of a school cut flower patch. For Sara, her must-have flower is Nigella ‘Persian Jewels’ for its excellent mix of colours and its fantastic seed pods. Calendula is Cally’s favourite. As she says, ‘It’s easy to grow, self seeds enthusiastically and is the perfect plant to get children to understand about collecting seed’. They have also devised a series of projects from learning about compost and the water cycle to creating art using nature and the importance of providing food for pollinating insects. Cally and Sara will provide members with regular blog updates, activities and advice. The site will also encourage adults and children alike to share their experiences with the hope that an online community of flower growers will blossom.

I know how passionate both Sara and Cally are, so I’m sure Our Flower Patch will be a huge success. If you are involved in education or youth work, are a parent or you know someone who might be interested in setting up a school flower patch then you can find more information about how to subscribe at http://www.ourflowerpatch.co.uk, Facebook Our Flower Patch and Twitter @ourflowerpatch. You can also contact Sara and Cally direct.

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A Sneaky Peek

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Frances Lincoln, Growing Cut Flowers, Jason Ingram, photo shoots, The Cut Flower Patch

The Cut Flower Patch

When I first started writing my blog one of the topics closest to my heart was growing cut flowers on my allotment. I have been a little quiet on the subject this year and that’s because I have been writing a book about it. Up until now I haven’t been able to say too much but at last I no longer have to keep it a secret. So I thought I’d tell you a little bit about it and give you a sneaky peek inside.

The book is called The Cut Flower Patch and it will be published on 6th March. Eeeeekkk!!! It’s all a little odd to be honest. This time last year I had just started the writing and had my first photo shoot. It’s hard to believe that I now have a finished book, I do find myself having to pinch myself. The book is a ‘how to’ guide to creating your own cut flower patch based on my own experiences over the last few years. When I first started growing flowers for cutting I thought I would need lots of space, which I didn’t have, for it to be successful, but it’s surprising what you can do even with a small patch of soil. The book covers everything from preparing a site and how to grow, to how to make your flowers last once picked. There is a whole section devoted to the flowers I’ve found to be the most productive and ideas about how to extend the cutting season using pickings from your garden and the hedgerows.

A section from Chapter 2 of The Cut Flower Patch

I love my cut flower patch, and it’s so addictive planning my list of what I want to grow next year. I really hope the book will inspire others to cut their own too. It frustrates me that so many flowers are flown half way around the globe. The environmental cost of this is huge. Then there’s the lack of any real choice, originality or seasonality. There are so many plants out there which make stunning cut flowers but we seem to be mainly offered lilies, chrysanthemums and carnations. There’s nothing wrong with any of these flowers as such but I’d like a bit of variety, blooms which reflect the seasons and ones which haven’t damaged the planet in the process. The theme of sustainability runs through the book with thrifty ideas of what to use as vases and using local suppliers and resources where possible.

A section taken from Chapter 9 of The Cut Flower Patch

Writing a book is an odd process. It has been fun, fascinating and at times frustrating. I feel really privileged to have had the opportunity. Like any other job, it comes with its stresses though. For a long period of time it is your baby and then you hand it over to the publisher and you realise it’s a collaboration where the finished product ends up a collection of ideas rather than just your own. I heard an interview with the crime writer Ian Rankin recently in which he said a draft copy of one of his books came back from the editor with a whole character removed from it!!! It can be quite a lonely process too. The ideas were in my head, it was up to me to produce the goods, and in the case of this book that meant not only the words but also the flowers. As a gardener I have always been fairly obsessed by the weather but that was taken to new levels this year. The coldest and latest spring on record followed by such a hot July played havoc with my plans. At times you start to take it personally. Growing flowers for cutting is really easy, growing them for a specific time when a photo shoot has been booked is a whole other ball game. I had small windows of opportunity for my flowers and the allotment to look their best which led to a few sleepless nights and moments of panic. Should I dead head and risk there being no new flowers or should I leave them and risk there being no new flowers. Planned photo shoots had to be rescheduled and there was a point in June when I did wonder if the plot would ever look like summer. But, in the end, it all worked out well and I’m really pleased with the final product. I have Jason Ingram, a wonderful photographer to thank for capturing the flowers and my allotment so beautifully. The photo shoots were one of the best bits of the whole process. Generally they went past in a frantic, lack of sleep induced blur but I loved them. When I have to leave my allotment behind some time in the next year or so it will be lovely to have such a beautiful record of the space I love so much.

A sneaky peek inside -Chapter 8 of The Cut Flower Patch

The night before the last photo shoot I went up to the plot to give everything a final water and to make sure it was looking at its best. The sense of relief that I was nearly there was almost overwhelming. Tomorrow would be the culmination of all my hard work. I allowed myself a few minutes where I felt a real sense of pride, and then panic took over. The site is quite visible from the main road, and although I hadn’t experienced any problems with vandalism other plots on the other side of the road had. A horrible thought suddenly struck me – ‘What would happen if my flowers were sabotaged over night?’. It sounds funny and more than a tad paranoid now when I look back but this was it, a year’s worth of work now in front of me. The idea that something could happen to it over night was too hard to contemplate. Wellyman, bless him, stayed watch at the plot until 11pm. He probably would have slept up there if I had let him but fortunately our rational brains kicked in and everything was where it needed to be the following day.

So, in less than 4 months the book will be out there, which is quite scary. Of course, that’s always the point but it was an abstract thought when I first started this. The other consequence will be I’ll no longer be just Wellywoman. My cover will be blown!! Oh yes, and I need to get use to the publicity stuff which doesn’t come particularly naturally. So I’d better not forget this bit.

The Cut Flower Patch is available to pre-order now on Amazon here in the UK and in America or from Waterstones. If you would prefer to buy from your local bookshop you can pre-order from there too.

Blooming Marvellous – A Day with Sarah Raven

Tags

Cutting Garden, Growing Cut Flowers, Perch Hill, Sarah Raven

You may have noticed that growing cut flowers is a bit of a passion of mine. I first came across the idea that I could turn over a patch of land purely for the purpose of growing flowers to cut when I discovered Sarah Raven’s book The Cutting Garden. Inspired I used a part of my garden to cut flowers and then when I took on my allotment last year I decided to devote 3 beds to producing my own blooms. I love it; the sense of satisfaction is immense and I get huge pleasure from giving away bunches to friends and having the house filled with flowers. So it might have been a long way to go for a day, Wales to East Sussex, but when I was asked to attend a press day at Sarah Raven’s Cutting Garden it was just too good an opportunity to miss.

Cut flower beds at Sarah Raven’s Cutting Garden

Sarah Raven’s name is now synonymous with cut flowers and her style of naturalistic, billowing and slightly unkempt arrangements, that are the antithesis to the uniform, stiff and well-behaved bouquets on offer from most florists. It all started 18 years ago when she was working long hours as a doctor in a local hospital. With a young family she was looking for a way of earning money which gave her time to see her children and that idea was cut flowers. She had just moved to a farm in East Sussex and had land at her disposal so she trialled the idea of growing flowers as a business. She realised that maximising the productivity of every square inch of ground would be essential if her idea was to be a success. At the time no one was growing annuals, they had completely fallen out of favour but Sarah saw their potential; the key being the sheer number of flowers they produced over a season.  Her business soon grew not just from selling flowers but also to teaching, writing and TV presenting, inspiring people like myself to grow their own cut flowers.

Masses of Euphorbia oblongata – an essential part of Sarah’s arrangements

As part of the day I was given a taster of the cut flower course she offers. Even for myself who has read and reread her books many times there was plenty to learn. Her 2 acre garden maybe substantially bigger than most but after nearly 2 decades of trialling which plants are most productive, her knowledge makes it easier for those of us with limited space to maximise its use. For plants to gain a place in her garden they have to meet certain criteria, such as time from planting to harvesting, the length and size of the harvest, the cost of growing and their versatility. The idea she is working on at the moment is what she calls ‘plant lasagne’, the layering of plants in the soil to cram even more into a space. Similar to planting different bulbs in a container at different levels, Sarah is currently growing artichokes, alliums and dahlias in beds producing high quantities of flowers and also an edible crop. I loved the colour contrast of redbor kale and the pinky/apricot coloured Tulip ‘Menton’ that were growing in her vegetable garden and is an idea that may well make its way onto my allotment.

The Cutting Garden at Perch Hill has four seasons which are dictated not by the actual season but by the plants that dominate that period. So season 1 is all about the bulbs with some biennials thrown in and runs from March to mid May, season 2 lasts from mid may to mid July and is the time for hardy annuals, which Sarah sows the bulk of in the autumn. Between mid July and September, season 3, the half-hardy annuals, tender perennials and dahlias take over. The final season can last, in this milder part of Britain, right up until Christmas and is the time for dahlias and chrysanthemums. This different way of looking at the growing season will certainly influence my planning for my own patch.

A stunning salad from the Perch Hill vegetable garden

A tour of the garden and a taster of her vegetable growing course were equally fascinating and informative but the icing on the cake was a demonstration of creating a hand tied bouquet in her inimitable style. Tips included holding a mass of flowers if you only have small hands, the easiest way to tie the bouquet without it falling to pieces and how to create a sieve with the foliage to give the bouquet structure.

I left with masses of notes and a head swirling with ideas. Maybe next year I might have to devote a fourth bed to cut flowers!!

For more information about Sarah Raven, her garden and courses visit her website. Perch Hill is open on selected days throughout the summer.